It was a lovely gala as usual and our team managers had nothing but praise for the children.
We had some great results. A few found themselves doing strokes they might not normally choose to do which produced some huge PBs, notably 8 seconds for Ava Hudson in the 50 breast, 8 seconds for Lily Collyer in the 50 fly and 7 seconds for Aaron Woods in the 50 fly!
Jack Paveley-Ellis knocked over 3 seconds off his 50 breast, even though he has only swum this recently. Likewise Fliss Harris on her 50 breast. Tillie Brown swam a 1.5 second PB in her 50 back to come within a whisker of a county qualifying time – just 0.01 off!
There were plenty more great PBs – too many to mention all individually!
There were some great wins too. Ashton Netherwood won the 50 back in a county qualifying time – but he is still too young to enter! Our younger boys rocked in the freestyle relays, with both the 8-9yr old team (Ollie Napier, Sammy Smith, Ben Randall, Edward Condron) and the 10/under team (Max Williams, Luca Grixti, Logan Hickmore, Ashton Netherwood) winning!
The children were fantastically loud with their team chant at the end, ably led by Ollie Harvey!
I always expect our team to respectfully wait at the end of the gala to hear the results and applaud the other teams – they did this brilliantly and clapped the other teams when results were announced.
We finished 7th overall, just ahead of Crawley.
Many thanks as always to our lovely helpers:
Tamsin Netherwood – Coach
Sarah Lees – Coach
Sam Grixti – Team Manager
Gary Greaves – Team Manager
Andrew Slade – Timekeeper
Dean Williams – Judge (J1)
Mel MacCallum – Trainee judge (J1T)
Heidi Cameron – Trainee judge (J1T)
